Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam

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Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam (‘Association for the Service of Islam’), launched in Lahore in 1884. One of its major efforts was the setting up of a number of schools for Muslim girls and orphanages in the Punjab, where girls were taught Urdu and the Qur’an, as well as mathematics, needlework and crafts. It started a publishing house for appropriate textbooks for Muslim girls’ and boys’ schools, and these were used all over the Punjab and beyond. In 1939 it set up the Islamia College for Women in Lahore, the only one of its kind in the region, whose curriculum was the standard Bachelor of Arts supplemented by Islamic education. It also set up Islamia College Lahore in 1892.

The Anjuman-i-Himayat-i-Islam was a more middle class body that represented a spontaneous desire on the part of middle-class Muslims of Lahore to cooperate with each other for common good. The Anjuman also played a vital role to provide a political platform for Indian Muslims.